From a Distance
by Stew Pid
Summary: A stranger evaluates Stars Hollow. I know, I suck at summaries.I'm wondering about the rating. I think the story's pretty safe, but I guess it depends on the person. But if you're allowed to watch Gilmore Girls I think you can read this.


By Stew Pid

Rating: Should be okay for everyone.

Disclaimer: I only own the Stew Pid stuff.

A/N: This is just a short one chapter thing. I'm experimenting with different forms of fic writing. Hope you like this one, and please read the A/N at the end. It's important after you read this story. =)

It is a cold, disagreeable evening in a warm and pleasant town. I find myself a stranger in the place where everybody knows your name. It's a small Connecticut town called Stars Hollow—a rather eccentric name for a very eccentric town. The same man who is going to fix my broken down car took my payment for a box of Goobers at the video store. I bought a burger, fries, and a cup of tea at the hardware store. Right now, I stand in the brisk air looking around, still in denial over the fact that I will probably have to spend the night.

A plump, officious man in a cardigan is closing the market for the evening, yelling at a young man who reminds me of the standard, clean cut small town boys who overpopulated the town where I grew up. They make for average students, perfect boyfriends, and good blue-collar workers. My eyes now turn to two corpulent women who gasp and giggle and whisper to each other. Indeed, I know their type as well. They're the type of women that accomplishes more with that whispering than an anchor man can accomplish with a megaphone. They wouldn't last a second with the Amazons. They need men, more for the talk than for anything else. Right now they are talking about a young man crossing the street with a book and a pack of cigarettes. Him I know too. He is the typical town rebel. Even the gait of his type is steeped in attitude. They are the masters of the unconventional. Funny though how conventional they all seem to me. They're the same in every town.

The one pair I can't place is this pair of young women sitting in the diner/hardware store. They have an intimacy that seems fraternal, yet there is something very maternal about the older one's eyes. She seems too old to be the other's sister, yet too young to be her mother. If she is the mother, where's the father? Families in towns like these are always nuclear. Come to think of it, the older seems familiar. She's the woman from the inn I checked into to drop off my stuff. I remember my first impression was that she was too spirited to be in a small town like this, but then it seemed to make sense to me why she would work in the Inn, the excitement of new people from exotic places. Thinking of it now, I have to laugh at myself. Why would anyone from an exotic place come here? These two young women baffle me. If I have anything, it's time. "Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore." 

I take a seat at the center of the diner. This is a play of characters and so I will play a part, the part of the snooty city tourist. The man who had served me before comes over. I assume he is the owner of the place. He's a dour man who wears his cap backwards. I like to play with small details like this and give them more importance than they merit. Right now I am presuming that the reason he wears his hat backwards is because he doesn't look forward, metaphorically speaking. His life perhaps offers nothing to look forward too. His internal gaze is perpetually backwards staring resignedly at bad hands, missed opportunities, regrets, and every other factor that leaves him stuck in this town. He disrupts my ruminations with a grunt.

"What are you having?"

"So I guess you don't serve water beforehand in these places?"

"Reservoirs are low. You want water, order it."

"And I suppose you don't have menus because the rain forests are depleted?"

I'm playing my part well. The owner tightens his jaw, obviously straining to repress the choice words he had in mind for a reply. He walks to the counter and brings me a menu which I don't even open before I order the evening's special. Man, I'm good. He snatches the menu back, grunts, and leaves, freeing my attention to observe the young ladies.

"Peppermint Patty," the older one asserts.

"Really?"

"What? She's great."

"I know, but I thought you would have said something more like Garfield."

"You think if I were going to be reincarnated as a comic strip character, I'd pick to be an overweight, cynical cat?"

"Yes," the younger quips dryly.

"Well, he was one of the top ten possibilities, I'll admit."

The younger miss gives a satisfied smile, then muses, 

"Do you think he was named after President Garfield?"

"That'd be a pretty presumptuous name for a cat, don't you think?"

"Well, considering that Garfield served only one year, and then died, I guess it's not as presumptuous as naming a dog after a planet."

"I'd like to own Pluto some day."

"The dog?"

"The planet. I always wanted to have my own world."

"You live in your own world."

"Well, I share it with you."

"You wouldn't share Pluto with me?"

"Get your own."

"Fine, then. I will."

"Which one?"

"I don't have to tell you."

"I told you mine, so it's only fair you tell me yours."

"Yes."

"Thank you. So what is it?"

"Yes."

"Come on, don't play with me. I'm your mother. If you move to this world and I'm watching TV and it's ten o' clock and they ask me where you are, what am I supposed to tell them?"

"Yes. Yes is my world."

"What?"

'"Yes is a world and in that world of yes lie—skillfully curled—all worlds.'"

"Who said that?"

"e.e. cummings."

"He must have had a lot of really great sex."

"That means Pluto would be mine, too. The universe would be mine."

"Only if I said 'yes.'"

"You just did."

"You're evil."

"I know."

"Rosemary's baby evil."

"I love you, too, Rosemary."

Never have I followed such a nonsensical interchange. At this point, the town rebel I had seen earlier enters the diner. He walks over to the counter, grabs the coffeepot, casually refills the cups of a chosen few, and returns to the register. The owner glares at him caustically as he comes over with my order.

"Looks great. Now where can I get a hammer here," I resume my part. He is just about to finally let out the choice words he'd been repressing when he gets a call from one of the young ladies, the older one.

"Luke, I need a man's opinion." The said Luke looks at me wearily and walks over to their table. The younger lady, I notice, slips out of her seat, allowing Luke to sit and walks over to the register. Of course, it's all predictable again. The young momma's girl has a crush on the bad boy. She's intrigued by his "bite my ass" attitude. She enjoys presenting conventional notions to him so he can trash them, enjoys his foul language, enjoys having him destroy her innocence with the apathy in his eyes, his sardonic tone, with every cuss word, every vulgar notion. She likes him for all the reasons everyone hates him. I'm almost tempted to leave at this point. I've seen it all. But as I see the women at opposite ends of the diner, separate but still connected, I return to their mystery. The younger one is closer to me, so I listen to her conversation. 

"So how did you like Austin?" she starts.

"He's no Austen."

"Should've seen that coming. So what? You didn't like it?"

"No, I did. It was pretty good. He was definitely on to something. And had he not been completely sober all his life he might have really hit something."

"Yes, because sobriety kills the brain," she retorts sarcastically.

"All geniuses have had their addictions."

"Hmm. Interesting. Sinclair Lewis, Dylan Thomas, Fitzgerald, Poe. Alcohol."

"Keats, Elizabeth Barret Browning. Opium."

"What about Hawthorne and Kafka? Geniuses influenced by Austin without addictions to toxic substances"

"Not all addictions are to toxic substances."

"True. But how do you know Austin didn't have an addiction to a non-toxic substance."

"Because if he did, he would have done a whole lot better with _Peter Rugg._ Hawthorne and Kafka had to hit it for him."

"Hmm. I'm going to have to mull that one over."

"Do whatever you want."

Her fingertips lightly graze the pack of cigarettes on top of the book.

"So is that what these are for? For genius' sake?"

"Now that would imply that I have aspirations, wouldn't it, Rory Gilmore?"

"It would," she affirms, searching him, not backing down.

"I'm trying to quit," he shoots back. She nods, resigning, then picks up with a smile.

"So I guess I'm going to have to find myself an addiction."

"You have too many already."

"Does that make me a super-genius?"

"Well if I'm going to stand by my theory I guess I'd have to say yes."

She, Rory, smiles proudly as Luke returns with the plates from their tables.

"You're done with this, right?" he asks vainly.

"Yup."

"Hey, hold up." The rebel grabs the plates from Luke's hands and sets them in front of him to finish off the fries.

"You're eating my fries," says Rory, stating the obvious.

"You were going to have them thrown out."

"How do you know I didn't cough all over them?"

"I don't and please don't tell me if you did."

"You don't care that I might have."

"Yeah, but I can't help it. It's an addiction." He pops the last of the fries in his mouth, winks at Rory, and heads into the kitchen with the plates.

Unraveling the subtle nuances of their conversation, I realize how vastly different it was from my previous supposition. Bewilderment is not allowed to last long, for the young man from the market comes in and Rory greets him with a sweet kiss so characteristic of young romance that I myself feel a nostalgia for my high school days I haven't felt since my first year at college. After Rory and her mother exchange good-byes, the perfect boyfriend (I learned his name is Dean from the greetings), ever the gentleman, holds the door open for Rory, as the rebel returns from the kitchen. Emotion quickly flashes on the rebel's typically stoic face, but it is so quickly checked that I do not have the time to identify what the emotion was. 

The man from the market in the cardigan comes in, arguing with Luke about something. I don't hear their discussion. Instead, I look at the mother and try to figure out why she is here when there is no food in front of her and her daughter is gone. She is staring at the two men arguing with a smile curled on her lips that makes me wish I knew what thoughts were going on in her head. 

"I'm telling you it was your nephew."

"And I'm telling you it wasn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because he's been here. He's right there." Luke points at the rebel, who waves tantalizingly at the cardigan-clad gentleman. 

"So you mean to tell me that Jess has been here _all_ night?"

"Yes, Taylor. He's been here _all_ night." 

It's a lie, I know, and Taylor knows, too. Why, though? That I don't know. For the moment, Taylor is defeated. The dissatisfaction in his expression seems so deep that I cannot believe it is only over a cover-up for a troublesome rebel. It pokes at something deeper. Maybe he is dissatisfied over his job, the town, his life. He shrugs off and turns to leave when his eye catches the mother alone at the table.

"Lorelai, can I count on you and Sookie to cater the Town Council Anniversary?"

"Sookie definitely, but don't count on me unless you want Pop-Tarts."

"I'll give Sookie a call. Good night."

"Good night, Taylor." 

As soon as he leaves, Luke turns to Jess but he has already made his disappearance. 

"You'll get him later. Don't worry about it," Lorelai reassures.

"Yeah," he sighs and takes the seat again at her table. 

"Let's gripe and fester and complain about how everything sucks."

"I have plenty of material."

"You couldn't possibly have more than me, the daughter of Richard and Emily Gilmore, pregnant at sixteen, left by the father of her child, twice, I might add, sold her soul to her parents, twice again, to pay for her daughter's education and to stop termites from eating her house, saves herself for a dead man, left a live one the day before the wedding, and broke her favorite pair of heels today and the toaster that makes the Pop-Tarts that would have made her that much more competent in catering the Town Council anniversary." 

Her life in a nut shell. I watch the two in their exchange without really listening. The image captures me the most. The chemistry around them is obvious, except to them. I have never seen two people more at home and yet, more lost. They understand each other well, balance each other. They are two parts of a whole and yet they have not come to oneness. What keeps them from it, I wonder? Rory comes into the diner once again, and pulls up a chair with Luke and Lorelai. She fortifies the chemistry in the room. The room fills up with the energy of the intense bonds between the three who talk and laugh casually around a table on which rests a single cup of coffee. The warmth, I remember, is the same warmth I felt when I first arrived, and I realize it is not just their energy filling the room but the energy of Stars Hollow. The entire town is connected in this warmth. 

Outside, once again. I stand and look about. Suddenly the small town looks bigger, the people more complex. When I stood here before everything was knowable. Now it all seems a mystery. In the air are secret emotions, private dreams and thoughts. And so it turns out the typical town is not so typical after all. Or maybe it is. Maybe in the grand scheme of life it is perfectly typical—typically untypical. 

A/N: Challenge: say that last bit three times fast. I got typically untickable. =)

Seriously, though. I just wanted to say, in reference to Rory and Jess' conversation, that I in no way am promoting addictions to drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, and most importantly SUGAR (it's my addiction and I think it's the most dangerous.) Yes is a world, but just say no. =) 


End file.
